More Paypal nonsense • Hacker News Board

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#241

Post by Duff » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 7:08 PM UTC

skeptical wrote: post #195

masklinn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why trust a business to such a stagnant concern? Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it . Oh if you're in the US for the US you might be able (and want) to gamble on an other younger service, but in the wider world? It's a fucking wasteland , it's either Paypal or Big Bank Merchant Account, and those are no fun at all either. My card expired (and was renewed) recently, I decided to stop using payp…

As a long time paypal user I must say that I rarely see such a good online based service. I phoned them multiple times and was always answered by well informed people that promptly provided me all the information I needed. Having lived in multiple countries and run paypal based businesses in more than one country simultaneously, I presented them with quite a few tricky questions which they always solved very quickly.…

Paypal rocks, until it doesn't.

I used it for years, mostly selling stuff on ebay. I never had negative feedback, never had an issue. I even used one of their two-factor auth tokens. Then one day, Paypal decided that they needed to review my account, and froze about $900 for 6 months.

The whole process was completely arbitrary and capricious. Haven't done business with Paypal or eBay ever since.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#242

Post by gnosis » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 7:12 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #187

DTanner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it. Hopefully in a few years time when it's matured, Bitcoin will be that alternative.

Bitcoin? No way. We might as well use Facebook credits. Getting Aunt Martha to trust some sketchy form of 'money' to make an online payment is going to be exceptionally difficult. Imagine suing for damages in bitcoins -- it's not a legal currency anywhere. It's a digital version of trading goats.

"Getting Aunt Martha to trust some sketchy form of 'money' to make an online payment is going to be exceptionally difficult."

Really? Then how did Aunt Martha ever get to trust some sketchy online auction site called "ebay"?

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#243

Post by paulhauggis » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 7:49 PM UTC

haakon wrote: post #232

paulhauggis wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never use Bitcoin. Mostly because the currency has a tendency to be so volatile. I've seen it worth $30 one day and $3 the next.

> I've seen it worth $30 one day and $3 the next. No. The downslide took considerably longer than that.

even so, you're adding risk on top of the risk of running a business.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#244

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 8:05 PM UTC

gnosis wrote: post #242

briandear wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin? No way. We might as well use Facebook credits. Getting Aunt Martha to trust some sketchy form of 'money' to make an online payment is going to be exceptionally difficult. Imagine suing for damages in bitcoins -- it's not a legal currency anywhere. It's a digital version of trading goats.

"Getting Aunt Martha to trust some sketchy form of 'money' to make an online payment is going to be exceptionally difficult." Really? Then how did Aunt Martha ever get to trust some sketchy online auction site called "ebay"?

Tens/hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing?

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#245

Post by skeptical » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 8:34 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #216

skeptical wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long time paypal user I must say that I rarely see such a good online based service. I phoned them multiple times and was always answered by well informed people that promptly provided me all the information I needed. Having lived in multiple countries and run paypal based businesses in more than one country simultaneously, I presented them with quite a few tricky questions which they always solved very quickly.…

Really? The only times I've had to phone paypal were when they started enforcing transaction holds on the account attached to eBay (despite having 100% REAL positive feedback on the account i've had since 2002) and I called to ask what the fuck they were smoking. Got no information what so ever. It's impossible to get ahold of anyone who speaks understandable english, or can do anything other than apologize and make…

I don't know if this is relevant, but as an european I phoned paypal europe. As far as I can tell from their accent, the phone was picked by irish people.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#246

Post by smackfu » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 8:45 PM UTC

SCdF wrote: post #39

dangrossman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to see a "PayPal horror story" that didn't fit into one of the "any payment processor in the world would consider this high risk and temporarily or permanently freeze the account" slots. If this discussion with the customer service rep did occur as written, it's the most ridiculous one I've seen yet, though. It's a major customer service fail even if the original reason for freezing the account was valid.

Can you explain how the OP's situation is high risk?

Because there may be no kids or gifts, just some bills due that need to be paid somehow. And if people figure that out, chargebacks ahoy!

Note that I'm not saying this is the case here, but this is the risk from the payment processor's standpoint.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#247

Post by loceng » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 9:35 PM UTC

PayPal is just as likely to hold funds for 6+ months if you're not selling a product if using "Buy Now."

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#248

Post by rynop » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 10:38 PM UTC

dr_ wrote: post #38

i use dwolla

this is great for dwolla. I'm glad this made CNN. Paypal needs all the negative publicity they can get.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#249

Post by morganw » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 10:43 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #62

"Donate" has a very specific meaning, at least in the US, and comes with numerous accounting connotations, including the ability to write off the expense. As many people don't realize that "charitable donations" do /not/ include "donations" to purchase toys for children, it is misleading to use the term "donation" in this circumstance. Meanwhile, often the person /accepting/ the donations doesn't understand this eith…

> they are not "donating". These "customers" are buying toys, which are then being sent to other people on their behalf.

It was a mistake for Regretsy to phrase it that way and it devolved into a mess from there. It started as a real donation to pay for the "cause" of giving toys to kids. Paypal's first complaint was that the recipient of the donations (the Paypal account holder, not the kids) was not a non-profit, yet their policies don't state this requirement.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#250

Post by einhverfr » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 11:23 PM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #209

einhverfr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about you but I would never do business with a financial service provider that would essentially decide if I was running "dirty books" by your loose definition and cut off services. The problem is here you have a major problem: 1) You can't prove bad bookkeeping practices without an audit and 2) I am not consenting to an audit if that removes me from 4th Amendment search protections (meaning the auditor…

Then don't use PayPal. Pay to process credit cards. As stated elsewhere, PayPal's business model is to provide point-to-point transactions between people, betting that they can prevent enough fraud to remain profitable. If what you're doing is unusual enough that you trigger their warning bells, then you're not worth the risk to them.

Paypal's fraud detection routines have been extremely, extremely overinclusive. They are worth using for some unimportant stuff but you don't have to be doing anything unusual to trigger a warning (I was just selling IT services), so they aren't worth betting your business on.